He began by taking out the photograph of Annette Bower and laying it on his desk where he could see it. Her picture helped to remind him that this was all about a real human being who might have lost her life, not just about a collection of evidence and witness reports. It was easy, sometimes, to lose sight of a victim as a person. Cooper was determined that Annette would be real. He wanted to feel that he knew who she was.
‘But who exactly were you?’ he said to the photo.
Her details showed that she was thirty-two years old when she disappeared. She’d been born locally as Annette Slaney, educated at Lady Manners School in Bakewell, before gaining a degree in Health and Human Sciences at the University of Sheffield.
When she graduated, Annette had taken a management job at a hospital in Sheffield, which was perhaps where she’d met Reece Bower. They’d married nineteen years ago, and had Lacey just over twelve months later. Annette had gone back to work part-time after the pregnancy, later moving to a new job at Eden Valley General. The Bowers had also moved house about that time, from Dronfield to Bakewell, moving further into Derbyshire.
Her interests were listed as walking, running and swimming. She’d been a member of two sports clubs and had learned to play the cello. Her life seemed pretty blameless. But, at some point, everything had gone wrong.
Cooper gazed at Annette’s photograph for a few more moments, looking into her eyes, imagining that she was right there in the office, on the other side of the desk, asking him to find out what had happened to her. He bowed his head in acknowledgment. No promises, but he would do his best.
The first statement he turned up was from Reece Bower himself. He’d made the 999 call to report his wife’s disappearance when she failed to return home from a run on the Monsal Trail, accompanied by their yellow Labrador. The dog had come back on its own, and he’d assumed that she’d lost the dog and was still searching for it. That was why he’d waited some time before making the call. No, Annette didn’t normally take her mobile phone with her. She carried an iPod and wore headphones, and she didn’t want the extra weight. She also felt she didn’t need it when she was going to be so close to home anyway. And she had the dog, said Bower, so she felt safe.
‘But was she safe?’ said Cooper to himself. ‘Perhaps not. And we only have her husband’s word for that.’
The second statement was from Annette’s mother, Catherine Slaney. She talked about her daughter’s turbulent relationship with her husband. In her interview, she seemed to want to put suspicion on Reece. But she agreed that Annette had left her husband once before, two years previously, after an argument over an affair that he’d been having with a colleague. Annette had stayed with her parents for four weeks before returning to her home in Bakewell.
Cooper flicked through the interview reports to find the colleague in question. Surely she’d been interviewed? Yes, here she was. Her name was Madeleine Betts. She admitted the relationship with Reece Bower, but told the interviewing officer that Reece had ended the affair so that his wife would return home. She had since moved to a different job within the hospital and no longer saw Reece Bower at all. She had never met Annette, she said.
One more witness report came from a dog walker who had been on the Monsal Trail that morning. She said she’d been accustomed to seeing Annette Bower jogging on the trail, but couldn’t say whether she’d seen the missing woman around the time of her disappearance. The witness stated that she hadn’t noticed anything unusual in the area, except the man in the red Nissan car. She said he was acting suspiciously and had driven off in a hurry when he saw her. She was unable to give a description of the man.
Cooper made a note. He wondered if that sighting had ever been followed up. It was nebulous, to say the least. But it was still a potential lead.
Then he read through the interviews quickly again. On the surface, there was no evidence against Reece Bower, in fact, no indication of a potential crime. Annette Bower had simply vanished. No one could say how, or why.
So what about the forensic evidence? This was where the case became more interesting, and more awkward for Reece Bower.
First up was a report from a forensic imagery expert, who had analysed CCTV footage. Footage showing a vehicle travelling through Bakewell on the morning of 29 October was said to show a car identical in model and colour to Bower’s blue Vauxhall, though the number plate was indistinguishable.
Specially trained cadaver dogs on loan from South Yorkshire Police had searched the Bowers’ home. The dogs were trained to sniff out traces of blood and human remains. The dogs, two springer spaniels, had identified areas of interest in the Bowers’ back garden, where signs of recent digging were evident.
A report from Detective Inspector Paul Hitchens summarised the contents of ten hours of interviews conducted with Mr Bower. During the interviews he’d noticed scratches and grazes on Bower’s hands. When asked about them, Bower said he had scratched his hands while gardening.
Forensic pathologist Dr Felix Webber had been asked to examine Reece Bower. Webber said the scratches and abrasions on Bower’s hands had happened around the time Mrs Bower went missing and the injuries were consistent with gardening activities, but could have had a number of other causes.
A forensic scientist had been called in to conduct a search for DNA at the property in Aldern Way and in the boot of Mr Bower’s car. She confirmed that she had been unable to find any trace of Annette Bower’s DNA anywhere in the building or in the car. She said that as she opened the boot, she noticed a fresh smell coming from inside which could either have been an air freshener or a cleaning agent.
A further examination of Reece Bower’s car found a substantial amount of mud and traces of vegetation on the chassis and embedded in the tread of the tyres, despite the fact that it had been washed at a hand car wash in Bakewell two days previously. Bower was unable to account for the mud, but suggested it had been dropped on the road by a farmer’s tractor.
Cooper nodded to himself.
‘That’s perfectly possible.’
In the next statement, Annette Bower’s sister, Frances Swann, said that Annette had confided in her about difficulties in her marriage. She had spoken about the possibility of divorce, even after the affair with Madeleine Betts was long over. Their finances were difficult and she was worried that her husband was getting into too much debt. Mrs Swann had last heard from her sister in a phone call two days before her disappearance, when she had sounded perfectly normal, with no sign of stress or any unusual state of mind.
Mrs Swann went on to say that she and her husband Adrian had arranged to visit the Bowers that afternoon, as they often did. Annette was out when they arrived, and Reece told her his wife had gone for a run with their dog and hadn’t yet returned. Her husband Adrian was with her, but he’d taken their two Jack Russells for a walk while Frances began to prepare a meal for them. During the time she spent in the kitchen of the Bowers’ home, she’d noticed a drop of blood on the tiled floor. She had no explanation for how it had got there. She expected her sister to return home soon, but she hadn’t. Mrs Swann had persuaded Reece to walk up to the nearby section of the Monsal Trail to look for Annette. The Labrador, Taffy, had re-appeared alone while he was out. On his return, Frances had pressed her brother-in-law to phone and report Annette missing, which he eventually did.
‘Which he eventually did’? That was interesting. Cooper had read a lot of witness statements, and the inclusion of a term like ‘eventually’ suggested that Mrs Swann had been very insistent on it.